


the way that friends behave

by embraidery



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, K'miri!Beau, Martial Arts, Shang warrior!Beau
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22629235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embraidery/pseuds/embraidery
Summary: Squire Alan needs a beau so the boys will stop trying to make her dance with girls at the ball. Who better than Shang warrior Beauregard?
Relationships: Alanna of Trebond & Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	the way that friends behave

**Author's Note:**

> title from From Afar by Vance Joy.
> 
> I honestly haven't decided if they will get together for real as is traditional with fake dating -- we will see how it goes!

Alanna couldn’t stand to talk to most of the girls in the palace any longer than she had to.

(She hadn’t given them a chance, though. The only time she’d interacted with most of the palace girls was at balls, which meant a lot of small talk. Who knows how many friends Alanna could have made if she wasn’t so strongly anti-feminine?)

So she was excited to hear that some of the Shang trainees were coming to the palace for a few weeks. She’d heard from Raoul, who’d heard from Jonathan, that they would fight the mysterious martial artists. Alanna looked forward to testing her skills against the legendary warriors, of course. She was also very curious to see what these fighter girls would be like.

The Shang envoy arrived on a Friday. The Tortallan pages and squires had been practicing their hand-to-hand fighting all week. All their teachers were on edge. Whispers about the Shang flew back and forth between all the squires and pages. All anyone knew for sure was that there were five trainees and three teachers, including the Wildcat. On the Monday after their visitors arrived, the pages and squires had a light breakfast and headed to one of the arenas.

There were three Shang teachers, as promised, and four trainees ranging in age from twelve to about Alanna’s age. She wondered how they decided which trainees came on such a trip. There were almost certainly more back at their school, right?

Duke Gareth conferred with the various training masters before standing to welcome their visitors. He gave the names of the pages and squires that would be fighting their guests. Alanna’s name, to her surprise and pleasure, was among them. The selected fighters made their way into the arena and bowed to their opponents as the Wildcat gave the names of the Shang fighters. Alanna’s opponent, Beauregard, looked at least part K’miri. She had the dark complexion, but bright blue eyes. She wore a blue tunic and leggings that matched her eyes. Alanna and Beauregard nodded to each other before going to sit against the arena walls, awaiting their turn.

The youngest fighters went first. Alanna winced watching the Tortallan page. His movements were still relatively clumsy, and he signalled his moves ahead of time. Still, Alanna had to admit that he was good for his age. Even so he was no match for the talented Shang fighter, who was tiny and knew how to use her size to her advantage. She defeated her opponent in record time.

The older Tortallan fighters did much better. Their fights were much more fluid and they tailored their approach to their opponent. The Tortallan won the first match, the Shang the second.

While it felt like Alanna had waited forever for her turn, she suddenly felt unprepared when she heard her name called. While her training with George had helped, she was sure it was quite a different style to the one in which Beauregard had trained. Alanna probably couldn’t use the dirtier moves George had taught her. Alanna slowly approached her opponent, flicking her eyes between the other girl’s eyes and torso, evaluating what she was up against. Beauregard did the same.

They got into the starting position, took a breath, and began.

Beauregard spared no time for evaluating the risks, going straight to hammering Alanna’s body with flurries of tightly-spaced punches. Alanna hadn’t expected it and went stumbling backward, losing valuable time. She scrambled to get on the defensive. It took a second, but once she got on her feet, she was able to hold her own while looking for Beauregard’s weaknesses. She was clearly more of an offensive fighter than a defensive fighter; maybe Alanna could pull back at the last second and knock her off balance. She made it look as though she leaned into Beauregard before each punch, looking for her weaknesses, until Beauregard got a little complacent. Then Alanna pulled back and down, letting Beauregard overbalance with the missed punch. Alanna took advantage of Beauregard’s stumble to take the upper hand. She hoped she could finish the fight as quickly as possible. Alanna often took hard punches, but Beauregard had a ferocity and follow-through behind her punches that made them hard to bear.

It wasn’t to be. Beauregard recovered quickly from her misstep. Alanna was tempted to resort to dirty fighting, but she couldn’t, not with her teachers and the other squires watching. But she could try to use her size. Beauregard wasn’t much bigger than her, but it might be enough. Alanna braced herself and shoved into Beauregard’s space. From here she could get better hits in on the bigger girl, but her head and neck were in danger. She settled for leaning forward and shoving all her body weight into Beauregard. It threw her off enough for Alanna to keep pressing her advantage. But Beauregard ducked, letting Alanna stumble forward, before knocking Alanna to the ground and pressing her full weight into Alanna’s body.

Alanna spat out the dust between her teeth.

“I yield.”

Alanna rolled onto her side, then her back, as Beauregard’s weight lifted off her. She looked up at the other girl. Beauregard looked down at Alanna with a steady, blue-eyed gaze. Then she pushed up to standing and held one hand in the air, absorbing the applause from both sides of the arena. She looked down at Alanna again, eyebrows creased, before giving Alanna a little half-bow and walking to the Shang side of the arena.

Alanna got to her feet and dusted off her leggings. She searched the crowd for Jonathan. She finally found him sitting with the rest of the knights. He smiled at her, and Alanna smiled back, but she could feel her disappointment welling into her chest. She left the arena and half-listened as the Shang teachers and Duke Gareth thanked everyone for the fight. She kept her eyes on Beauregard. She sat a little apart from the rest of the fighters, posture ram-rod straight. Duke Gareth dismissed everyone present. The spectators began to stand up and prepare to go, chattering eagerly amongst themselves. Alanna made her way over to Beauregard, trying her best to seem casual.

“You’re Beauregard?”

"What do you want?" Beauregard tightened the leather cord tying her dark hair back, showing off her rippling muscles. The sides of her head were shaved, a hairstyle Alanna rarely saw in Tortall. Her words were brusque, but her tone wasn’t entirely forbidding. Alanna decided to press on.

“I--” Alanna cut herself off, remembering that she couldn’t just reveal the true reason why she wanted to speak with a female warrior. “I, uh--”

Beauregard’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “Come with me.” She stood up and walked out, not stopping to see if Alanna was following her.

Alanna followed her to one of the wings of the palace that housed guests. She rarely spent time here, so she paid close attention to the ways in which the wing was similar and different to the pages' wing. They soon came to Beauregard’s room, which was almost painfully tidy. Alanna supposed she hadn’t had much time to spread her things across the room yet.

Beauregard flopped into one of the chairs arranged in front of the fire. She seemed more comfortable in private, letting her limbs dangle haphazardly where they fell. She raised her eyebrows at Alanna, who took the other chair, feeling inexplicably nervous.

Beauregard looked Alanna over again with those bright eyes. “You’re a woman, aren’t you?”

Alanna nearly fell out of her chair. “No! What makes you say that?” She tried to relax back into the chair to make herself look less guilty, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t work.

Beauregard smirked. “Doesn’t matter how I know. But you are a woman, and you’re hiding it. Why?”

Alanna bit her lip. On one hand, she wasn’t used to spilling her secret. On the other, Beauregard was an outsider and wouldn’t have much motivation for telling others about Alanna.

“C’mon, you can tell me,” Beauregard coaxed. It was the first time she felt like a potential friend rather than an intimidating talking statue. Alanna sighed.

“My father wanted me to go learn how to be a lady and my brother a knight. But I want to be a knight more than anything, and I’m much better than my brother at fighting, anyway!”

Beauregard nodded. “I get it. So they don’t let women fight here in Tortall?”

“No.” Alanna frowned. “There used to be lady knights, about one hundred years ago, but they're banned now.”

“That’s stupid.”

Beauregard was a little uncouth, Alanna thought, but she liked it. “I know!”

“So why did you come over to me after our bout?”

Alanna sighed. “There have been a lot of balls lately, and all my friends tease me for not wanting to dance with girls. I thought maybe if I spent time with one in particular they would stop bothering me about it.”

“So your solution to the problem of spending time with girls, which I personally don't see as a problem, is to spend time with a girl?”

“Dancing with them makes them think you want to kiss them. I would just spend time with you as a friend. But when the boys are around, maybe we can make it look like we want to kiss each other…” Alanna trailed off, doubting her logic.

Beauregard leaned back in her chair, trying to make the front legs come off the ground, but the chair was too big and heavy for her to get enough leverage. “Oh, like fake courting. Why didn’t you just say that?”

“Fake courting?”

“Yeah. I have this friend at home, Jester, and we pretend to be lovers all the time to con people. So, what are the rules?”

Alanna felt as though she’d given someone a rough sketch and they’d handed her a technical drawing with way more detail than she’d realized she needed.

Beauregard apparently picked this up from her face. “Like, first of all, how are we going to do this? Do you need us to actually appear in front of the boys? Like, holding hands and shit? Or are you just going to tell them about it and I’ll wave coyly at you when I pass you in the hallways?” She batted her eyelashes at Alanna.

“I hadn’t gotten that far yet,” Alanna admitted. “We could go to the next ball.”

Beauregard leaned forward and looked at her intently. “Is kissing on the table?”

Alanna could feel her face warm. “Well, I’m doing this so I don’t have to kiss anyone…”

“Fair.” Beauregard clapped her hands together lightly. “I can do going to the ball. Do you want me to be a girly girl?” She fluttered her eyelashes again and clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Hi, I’m Traci!”

Alanna frowned. “Everyone knows you’re one of the Shang.”

“True.” Beauregard relaxed back into her chair. “So, what's your name? You can call me Beau. I’m not fancy.”

Alanna shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “It’s Alan. Squire Alan.”

“Nice to meet you, Alan.” Beau winked. “Can’t wait to be your girl.”


End file.
